West Ham United have sacked head of recruitment Kyle Macauley less than a year after he arrived for over a million pounds. 

When West Ham hired Graham Potter in January 2024, the former Brighton manager wanted his long-term friend and colleague to join him in East London.

But there was one problem, he was still under contract at Chelsea, so we had to a agree a compensation package to get him out of Stamford Bridge. After a while of negotiations, the Hammers agreed to pay a reported fee of £1,2m for the Englishman.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a successful move, it didn’t work out for wither Potter or Macauley at West Ham and just ten months later, they have both been sacked. Yet another decision by the West Ham board that cost them a lot of money.

This is just one of a few similar stories in recent years for the Hammers. We have had failed experiments in hiring a director of football or head of recruitment.

The first person West Ham hired in a role of this type was Tony Henry, he was head of player recruitment for four years between 2014-2018. The Englishman was probably the most successful of the people we’ve had in this role, helping bringing in some excellent players like Kouyate, Payet, Antonio and Lanzini.

However, even though he was pretty successful, like every other person that followed, he left the club on bad terms. He was dismissed by the club due to the controversy of his discriminatory remarks towards African players.

The next director of football was Mario Husillos, an Argentine who came to the club with Manuel Pellegrini. Amongst a lot of bad signings like Felipe Anderson, Andriy Yarmolenko and Lucas Perez was a gem like Lukasz Fabianski.

However, he left the club after just eighteen months with Pellegrini, despite being given a three year contract, meaning he too received a multi-million pound pay-off.

In between Husillos and Macauley was Tim Steidten. The German arrived at the club under David Moyes in the summer of 2023, with the aim of helping him out in the transfer window.

But that wasn’t the case at all, despite a remising start to the 2023 transfer window, their relationship became stale. Steidten and Moyes fell out as he wanted to bring in players the Scotsman wasn’t happy with.

The Hammers decided to release Moyes at the end of his contract in the summer of 2024, and the former Bayer Leverkusen scout decided to replace him with Julen Lopetegui. And when that went completely wrong, we had no choice but to get rid of him, especially when Graham Potter came in and brought Kyle Macauley with him.

What these consistent failures should show the West Ham board is that they’re doing this completely wrong. We keep hiring managers, then bringing in the technical director/director of football after.

The point of this role is for them to completely take over the recruitment side of the club, not only do they need to decide the players to sign, they need to choose the manager. Yes, I guess Steidten did do that with Lopetegui, but Steidten wasn’t the right person to do that role at West Ham.

If we can find someone who would fit that role perfectly, I would consider trying it again next time we are in need of a rebuild, however, with our current owners and how much they like to get involved, I don’t think the right person for the role exists.